Sunday, August 02, 2009

No No Square (by Liz)

In May, a group of cheerleaders took the stage at a state-sponsored, state-funded event called "The Abstinence Works! Let’s Talk About It! Teen Summit" at the Coliseum in Jackson, Mississippi and chanted:

Stop.
Don’t touch me there!
You know this is my no-no square.


No no square? That can't possibly be effective. But what do I know? It's been a long time since I was in high school. Back then a cheerleader favorite was:

Go bananas
Go go bananas
Go bananas
Go go bananas
Lean to the left
Lean to the right
Peel your banana
And uh! (insert chest and hip thrust here) take a bite.


In this video from Stuart Productions you can catch highlights of the summit. It includes comments from the ACLU, which has filed a complaint about the event, and from a Judge John Hudson who tells the 5,000 person crowd that, ""The rules of abstinence begin with our Creator."

God and Abstinence from Stuart Productions on Vimeo.



Twenty five years ago, where I grew up anyway, teens weren't getting any sex education. We were just blithely offering to share our bananas. Today's teens don't seem to be getting the facts either. Here's a sampling of what we’ve been teaching our teens:

- That saying no now will lead to a long, happy marriage later. (Yes, marriage is that easy.)
- That sex outside of marriage is destructive. (Same sex marriage not allowed in your state? Oh well.)
- That there is a battle of the sexes. Boys and girls have different urges and agendas. (Boys are raring to go but girls require time and effort to get turned on.)
- That if you already had sex, don't worry. Second virginity is an option. (Hmm, we get nine lives. Do we get nine virginities?)

Where do kids learn that marriage is not a magic pill? It requires work. And by the way sex can be good or it can dangerous in any kind of relationship: married, unmarried, heterosexual and homosexual. That whether you come from Mars or Venus, sex should satisfy both of you and not harm either of you. And that sex doesn't have to be all or nothing -virgin and whore are not the only options.

A Google search "wait have sex" led me to "Alive With Love" the website of Karen Oh, the Heart Whisperer. In a letter to young women, Karen describes sex this way, "The male puts his penis inside a woman's vagina. He has an orgasm causing him to ejaculate, and sometimes, she has an orgasm...That's sex, the simple biology."

That's right girls. Sex is about males having orgasms. And sometimes, you might luck out too. And this from a relationship and dating expert who promises to "bring you the love and romance you seek." If I were a teenage girl, that would be all the advice I'd need. No sex for me, thank you very much. I can wait for that. Now, what to do about the boys?

This past week The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to end funding for abstinence-only-education programs. The bill will include money for comprehensive sex-education. Let's hope some of it goes to creating curriculum that is free of sexism and offers modern, realistic options for teens.